Yamaha Nuage Helps Radio France Look To The Future

French public service broadcaster Radio France delivers a wide range of news, information and entertainment via its six national stations and France Bleu, a network of 44 regional stations. It is also committed to investigating and developing innovative new broadcast methods, which is why the company recently invested in a Yamaha Nuage mixing system.

Radio France has its headquarters at Paris’s Maison de la Radio, whose studios and performance spaces have hosted many of the world’s leading artists. The facilities include Studio 104, one of the most historic and culturally significant broadcast venues in France.

In a nearby experimental studio Hervé Déjardin, from Radio France’s Quality and Innovation Department, is working to make new history, facilitated by a Yamaha Nuage system. Radio France is currently studying the production, post-production and broadcast of programs in binaural mode, with the intention of reproducing multi-channel spatial mixes for listeners using a single set of headphones. As part of this project, Hervé is working on a project to produce immersive plays using multi-channel audio.

He chose Steinberg Nuendo for managing the project and it was a straightforward decision to make this part of a complete Nuage system.

“I am familiar with Nuendo and had two main reasons for using it on this project,” he says. “Firstly there was its ability to mix down to all necessary formats very quickly, meaning I can instantly check the compatibility of mixes and, secondly, the ease with which I can import OMF files containing montages from different productions on ProTools.

“Thanks to the direct and rapid access that Yamaha Nuage offers for managing automation and mixdowns, it was a very easy decision to use Nuage for system control. It is the perfect complement to Nuendo."

As well as benefitting broadcast applications, Hervé and his team know that they have the potential to enhance the listening experience on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. It is hoped that the work the Yamaha Nuage system is doing now will benefit global audio consumers in the future.